Moral science has two halves. There are the implications of thinking straight about fact and value (ideal theory) and there are the implications of not thinking straight. Ideal theory is the foundation, error theory the daily battle.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Missing from Obama's big energy tour: not a single word about GHGs or CO2 or climate

Obama's first big energy-policy speech was to the United Nations in 2009 when he boldly told the entire world that it had to get off of fossil fuels because: "the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing." "Rising sea levels threaten every coastline," blah, blah, blah, but to the true believers, it was lines from a psalm:

More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict. All the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution [must] act together.Wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for hybrid cars.Loan guarantees and tax credits.A future that is worthy of our children

Now, not a single word about climate or CO2. Guess that makes it official. Greenhouse gases and global warming are no longer a motivating concern for U.S. energy policy. Quick, tell the EPA, whose war on CO2 is already shutting down its first tenth of the grid. Not needed anymore guys. CO2 is no longer even worth mentioning. Can we hold Obama to it?

He did repeat "clean energy" a bunch of times in his Nevada speech, but there is NOTHING unclean about CO2, so that doesn't count. CO2 is the essential nutrient from which all life on the surface of the earth is constructed. Animals get their carbon building blocks from plants which get it from atmospheric CO2 through photosynthesis, and current levels of CO2—about 0.039 percent of the atmosphere—are alarmingly close to the minimum required to sustain life.

Carbon dioxide is necessary to sustain life in concentrations of about 0.04 percent of the earth's atmosphere ...

The biosphere craves more of this healthful gas, not less.

The ONLY concern about CO2 is the idea that its greenhouse warming effect might be dangerous, and no such concern is being voiced by Obama. Apparently it is off the table, which ought to clear off all of his green energy plans as well, because their explicit rationale has been the greenhouse threat from CO2.

"Climate" was why, in Obama's 2008 words, electricity prices would have to "necessarily skyrocket." It was all about capping CO2 in order to save the planet from global warming:

[C]limate change is a great example. You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.

The danger of CO2 required a switch to green fairy power. Coal would be forced into bankruptcy while alternate-reality approaches to energy would be subsidized:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

So much for "all of the above." All but coal, shale oil, tar-sands, ANWR oil, and pretty much anything that produces CO2. And yet, now that CO2 is no longer an official concern, none of these anti-CO2 policies has altered one whit.

Shutting down Keystone and ANWR are just the latest in the long train of Obama-democrat shutdowns of fossil energy, and Obama is still calling for more Solyndras. From his kick-off speech last week in Maryland:

And I want to keep on making those investments. (Applause.) I don’t want to see wind turbines and solar panels and high-tech batteries made in other countries by other workers. I want to make them here. (Applause.) I want to make them here in Maryland. I want to make them here in the United States of America, with American workers. That's what I want. (Applause.)

The only thing new is a switch in rationale. Out with saving the planet and in with ... saving the economy. Now the reason we are going to unplug our existing energy infrastructure and put all of our eggs in baskets that can't float without government subsidy is because that's the way to prosperity.

Not an easy sell, but Obama is up to it. His Maryland speech was the template, resting his economic argument on two of the biggest whoppers ever told: 1) that his administration is already drilling aggressively yet gas prices are still high, proving that aggressive drilling can't bring gas prices down, and 2) America is an oil-poor country, so really, our only alternative is rainbow colored unicorn farts.

Thorough take-down of the Obama-whoppers here. But the big take-away? CO2 is no longer enough of a concern to be worth mentioning, according to President Obama himself.

Obama doesn't mean it, but if he's going to abandon his climate-based opposition to fossil fuels then we should hold him to that: economic considerations alone call for Drill Baby Drill; there is no more need to fund the anti-CO2 frauds at the IPCC; and come on EPA, you heard the boss. Coal, "clean" in the old-fashioned sense of not spewing soot, is a-okay.

About Me

Here is a short bio I sent to press people covering the Flight 93 memorial debacle. My training is as an economist. I was in the PhD program in economics at Stanford until my research led me more towards moral theory and constitutional law, at which point I dropped the program and started working on my own. I was writing a book on republicanism (the system of liberty under law) for World Ahead Publishing when I discovered that the Flight 93 memorial was going to be a terrorist memorial mosque. World Ahead agreed to first publish my book about this rehijacking of Flight 93 (Crescent of Betrayal, temporarily available for free download at CrescentOfBetrayal.com). This is not my first venture into journalism. Over the years I have been a writer, opinions editor, and advisor for Stanford’s conservative campus newspaper The Stanford Review, and am currently on the Review’s board of directors.